Author: A Surya Prakash
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 3, 2006
The silver jubilee celebrations of the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) have just concluded. The completion of 25 years is a significant
milestone for any political party. It is a moment to savour. It is also a
moment for introspection, more so for a party which, after achieving spectacular
heights in a short span of time, has fallen in the eyes of its own cadres
and well wishers.
Members of the BJP have many reasons to celebrate.
In a span of just 25 years, the party rose from a strength of just two in
the Lok Sabha to over 180, came to power at the Centre and in many States
after dislodging the century-old Congress party. Further, it emerged as a
national party securing more seats that the Congress in the Lok Sabha on a
couple of occasions in the last decade and matched the Congress' vote share
in 1999.
These are extraordinary achievements for a
party so young but success has also spelled disaster taking many members of
the party away from their moral and ideological moorings and party discipline.
What other explanation can there be for so many BJP MPs being caught taking
cash-for-questions or commissions for projects implemented through the Members
of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme.
These are issues which the party needs to
address if it wishes to regain the support of middle India which came under
its thrall when it promised to be a party with a difference. Media reports
quote Mr LK Advani, the outgoing president of the Bharatiya Janata Party as
having told the party's silver jubilee convention that the BJP was the only
party in the country that could boast of a dedicated band of selfless workers
and that barring a few individuals (caught in sting operations), the rest
of the party remained within its ideological framework. Individual lapses,
he reportedly said, did not represent the party's collective failure. In any
case, he was of the view that the masses "do not share the media hype
against us".
It is true that the party had faced many ups
and downs over the last 25 years. But it would be incorrect for Mr Advani
to equate the party's current troubles to electoral ups and downs. As he himself
indicated at the silver jubilee convention, the moral quotient is important
and this is indeed the issue. The BJP's moral quotient has nose-dived and
the party can never set its house in order unless it addresses this issue.
If the BJP wishes to redeem itself in the
eyes of the people, it will have to identify the ills plaguing the party with
greater diligence. While it is true that the BJP has selfless cadres, it is
not the only party to be so blessed. The two communist parties most certainly
have dedicated workers with deep ideological commitment. Secondly, unlike
the BJP, the two communist parties also have selfless leaders!
Selflessness as a quality evaporated in the
higher echelons of the BJP soon after it came to power in 1998. Sadly, though
many of these leaders were schooled in the RSS, the pursuit of self serving
personal agendas became their main occupation during their years in power
and strangely this continues even to this day. Such is the level of selfishness
that one wonders whether national interest and public interest, which dictated
the response of BJP leaders to events and situations in the past, is still
on the agenda of leaders of this party.
Mr Advani, who along with Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee
struggled for decades to build the Jana Sangh and its latter day avatar the
BJP, must come face to face with this reality and goad the party to undertake
a cleansing operation. The party cannot regain its lost glory if people like
him shy away from an honest diagnosis of the problem.
More so when the BJP is the main Opposition
party in Parliament. Having seen politics at close quarters for half a century,
Mr Advani is aware that stripped of moral authority, members of the opposition
begin to look like cartoon characters. After long years in power at the Centre,
the Congress party went through this phase when it occupied the Opposition
benches between 1998 and 2004.
One often felt that there was something distinctly
hollow in the party's arguments. How receptive can one be to arguments about
anti-democratic policies of say, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government,
when those making the allegation belong to the Congress party that misused
its parliamentary majority to subvert democracy during the Emergency in the
mid-1970s. It again tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to use its brute parliamentary
majority to gag the media at the height of the Bofors controversy through
an obnoxious piece of legislation known as the Defamation Bill.
Similarly, the allegations of corruption hurled
by Congress MPs against the N D A Government and its Ministers was wholly
devoid of moral packaging because corruption assumed unmanageable proportions
when Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi headed the Government at the Centre. Such
was the extent of degeneration that people like Jayaprakash Narayan were forced
to come back from retirement to lead a major political movement for restoration
of democracy and some decency in public life.
As the era of single party rule came to an
end, the Congress party devised new ways of contriving a parliamentary majority.
As the JMM Bribery Case showed, it got down to purchasing the support of Jharkhand
Mukti Morcha MPs at Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore a piece. All this put the Congress
party at a terrible disadvantage when it occupied the opposition benches.
On the other hand, most members of the BJP-led coalition that came to power
in 1998, walked in with a clean slate. So you had this strange situation of
seeing "clean" Ministers and "tainted" Opposition MPs.
It had happened once before in 1977-80 and
it was happening again - a very uneasy and unreal period in India's democratic
history in which the usual bonhomie between the main Opposition party and
the media was missing. I distinctly remember leaders of the Congress party
complaining that they were not getting the support of the media. There were
at least two reasons for this. One, having been the ruling party for long
years, the Congress party just did not know how to function as an Opposition
party.
Two, having been uncomfortable with a free
media for several decades, the Congress party just did not know how to establish
a healthy working relationship with the media. As if all this was not enough,
the Congress party chose its most inexperienced MP - Ms Sonia Gandhi - as
Leader of the Opposition. This resulted in a weak Opposition devoid of moral
fibre and parliamentary skill.
The year 2004 saw a dramatic change in the
fortunes of the two main political formations in the country when the Congress-led
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) dislodged the NDA from power. Now members
of the BJP found themselves in the opposition benches once again. Given the
long innings that the party has had in the opposition benches, one presumed
that members of the BJP would settle down rather easily to their familiar
role but this was not to be.
Many of its Ministers and MPs had made such
terrible compromises when in office that they lacked the gumption to raise
their voice on behalf of the people. Corruption, nepotism and divisiveness
- common afflictions among Congressmen - had struck BJP Ministers as well.
Stories abound of how many of them have amassed
wealth. Journalists are also clued in to the personal agendas that many solo
players within its ranks pursue even to this day. But this is not all. They
come with yet another ailment that still remains peculiar to this party -
arrogance. I have not seen a more arrogant bunch of Ministers in my 35 years
of journalism. These are issues which the BJP must address if it wishes to
stem the rot.
